


The Painted Pot

by EricaEntertainsIdeas



Category: Code Lyoko, Code Lyoko Evolution
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29188542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EricaEntertainsIdeas/pseuds/EricaEntertainsIdeas
Summary: Aelita and Odd spend the day painting. Sequel to Nightmare, but it can be read alone.
Relationships: Odd Della Robbia & Aelita Schaeffer, Odd Della Robbia/Aelita Schaeffer
Kudos: 10





	The Painted Pot

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to the story I wrote a few months ago, Nightmare, but you don’t need to read Nightmare to understand this one. Thanks for reading! I do not own Code Lyoko.

It had been two weeks since Aelita went to Odd after she had a nightmare. Odd had comforted her and they had fallen asleep in the same bed. 

Aelita knew that her relationship with Odd was different now. She didn’t think Odd comforting her made them anything more than friends, but now Odd was her friend whose arms she knew were very nice to sleep in. 

Strong arms that held her and protected her and……

“Aelita, can you tell me the answer to question number three?” Her math teacher asked accusingly. Oh gosh, she’d been thinking about Odd’s arms, again! She needed to get a grip. Question 3…

“14?” She had no idea what the answer was but her brain wasn’t going to be able to put in any effort right now. 

“No,” her teacher said, exasperated. “The answer is 83. Please try to pay more attention.”

Aelita could feel her cheeks and ears burning from embarrassment. 

After class, she headed back to her room to enjoy the rest of her Saturday, when she only had half of a day of classes. 

She was listening to music when she heard a knock at her door. Sitting up, she called out, "Come in!" 

"Hey, Aelita," Odd said, opening the door. 

"Odd," she flushed, not expecting to see him. "What's up?"

"Are you doing anything right now?"

Aelita looked around, at a loss for words really. “No, not really.”

“Would you want to do something?”

“Sure.” She couldn’t help the smile threatening to break into a grin on her face.

Sliding off of the bed and plopping onto the floor, she pulled her boots on and took the hand Odd offered her to stand. 

“Where are we going?” Aelita asked as they made their way into the hall.

“It’s a surprise,” Odd said and winked. His grin was a little too mischievous for her liking.

They walked all the way into town, talking about their classes and avoiding any big topics. Odd stopped short in front of a craft shop.

“What is the...Painted Pot?” Aelita asks, squinting up at the sign.

Odd opens the door for her and gestures for her to enter. She does, looking around in wonder. The place has an open layout with long tables covered in paper placed all around the store and there are shelves with ceramic creatures, plates, and houses, some painted but most unpainted. Aelita gravitates towards them, inspecting an expertly painted butterfly and then a fairy house that makes her eyes light up. Odd follows her, watching her take everything in. 

Aelita is so busy looking at all the crafts that it takes her several minutes to look at Odd and ask, “What are we supposed to be doing?” 

He laughs, casually yet gingerly draping his arm over her shoulders. “We choose a blank ceramic,” he motioned to the collection before them. “Then,” he said, gently turning her back towards the tables, “we sit at a table and paint them and then we get to take them home.”

Odd wasn’t looking directly at her, but he could feel the smile come over her face. “Oh Odd, that’s wonderful.” She stole a quick glance up at him. 

Removing his arm from her shoulders, Odd told her to choose anything she wanted to paint and that he would go to the counter to pay for them. Aelita flushed, slightly embarrassed because of course, he was paying for her. She hadn’t fully understood money when she arrived on Earth and kept forgetting that you needed money to pay for things as she hardly ever left campus and needed to. Still, she felt guilty relying on her friends so much even though they tried their best to make her feel comfortable with it. They knew she had no money or access to get a job when they had to be on campus all the time. 

Still, she did her best to brush off the guilt and looked for what to paint. Her eyes quickly zeroed in on the fairy house she had seen earlier. It was all rounded edges with a little chimney and there were imprints of grass and flowers around the outside along with a rounded door. 

“You can put a light inside it too,” Odd said, coming up next to her. 

“What do you mean?” She asked. 

“You can put a candle inside it and it’ll light up.” He picked up the house and turned it around, showing her a back doorway that opened into the middle of the house instead of being closed off like the front door. “The windows are open too, so if you put a candle inside, it’ll glow through the windows.” 

Aelita smiled, not truly understanding, but liking the idea that there was something extra special about her fairy house. 

“What are you picking?” She asked him. Odd showed her the jolly-looking gnome in his hands. 

"He's to guard your house. You have to have someone to protect your fairy."

"I don't know, what if my fairy can protect herself?"

"Then my gnome will just be a friend." Odd was smiling at her, but his eyes were downcast, looking at his gnome. He took the house from her hand and asked her to pick an empty table with paint on it.

When Odd joined her at the table, she was still examining all the different colors. 

“Do you know what color you’ll paint it?” Odd asked, settling down across from her. 

“I think...pink. With a blue roof, and yellow windows.” She got more excited as she went on, clearly making color decisions on the fly.

They poured the paint into empty plastic palettes that had seen better days and went about painting in mostly silence. The store had light pop music playing in the background and occasionally they’d catch themselves humming along to one together and smile, but they were both determined to make masterpieces. 

Half an hour flew by before Odd proudly presented his gnome to Aelita. 

“And….Tada! Scone the Gnome, say hello to Aelita.” Aelita couldn’t hide her laugh. Her eyes lit up in mirth as she took in the gnome’s purple and green outfit. 

“Isn’t a scone a biscuit?” 

“Sure it is but it sounds fun. He looks like a Scone. Couldn’t be a better name for him,” Odd boasted. 

“I don’t know, he looks more like a Samuel to me.”

“Samuel? Now he’s offended.”

Aelita puffed up her cheeks and leaned forward on her elbows, narrowly missing the blue paint in her palette, to look the gnome in the eye. “I’m sorry, Scone. You’ll still visit my fairy won’t you?” She gave him her widest eyes and blinked innocently.

It took Odd a little longer than he’d admit to answer her in what he felt was the longest ten-second silence of his life, coughing to cover up his awkwardness before answering in a gruff voice, “Well when you put it that way…”

Aelita grinned, hopping up and straightening her back again, “Thanks, Scone! You’re the sweetest.”

As Aelita went back to putting the finishing paint strokes on her fairy house, Odd pulled out his cell phone and started to snap pictures of himself and Scone to show off to their friends and his sisters. He also snapped a few of Aelita while she was painting. 

“Look,” Odd said, showing her the picture on his phone. “It’s you and your super concentration face.” 

Aelita looked up in confusion for a moment before registering that Odd had taken a picture of her. She smiled and waved the photo off. “You can take a picture when it’s done, Odd.” 

“Fine, fine.” Odd said, putting his phone away. He watched her paint for a few more minutes before she turned the house around and presented it to him.

“What do you think?”

“It’s great, princess. Your fairy will be very happy with it.” 

They chatted for a few minutes while her house fully dried. Odd pulled out his phone again and took a few more pictures with them holding up their creations and grinning like fools. Then they were out the door, their creations swinging in the bags in their hands. 

As they neared the entrance to the campus, Odd slowed his pace and eventually stopped walking altogether, causing Aelita to stop and look at him when she realized he wasn’t next to her anymore. “What’s wrong?” She asked. 

“Um, Aelita,” Odd’s hands were in his pocket and he was fidgeting as she continued to look at him. 

“Yes?” Now she was concerned. Concerned and curious. And the more nervous he looked the more nervous she was starting to feel.

“Well, we never spoke,” Odd started, “about the other night. Your nightmare. Are you still having them?” Odd managed to say this while looking directly at her but ducked his head once he finished. Why was this so hard for him?

“Oh..” Aelita trailed off. “I don’t think they’ll go away, but I haven’t had one since..” Her cheeks flushed and she looked away towards the street next to them. “Since I came to you.” 

“Oh, okay, good. Good. Just, checking.” Odd sputtered out. And then more words that he did not mean to say tumbled out of his mouth, saying, “Because if you have any more, you can always come to me about them. Ulrich sleeps like the dead so you don’t have to worry about waking him if you knock and..I don’t want you to have any more nightmares. I...I think we all get them but you probably do more than the rest of us and it’s nice to have someone there.”

Halfway through speaking he was able to glance at her and found her looking at him, blushing, and he tore his eyes away quickly. He was used to saying nice things to girls, he asked girls out on dates all the time and showered them with compliments, but this was different. This was Aelita - Jeremy head over heels in love with her Aelita, saved hundreds of times by her and vice versa Aelita, sweet and funny and geeky Aelita and he was basically saying that she was welcome in his bed anytime which was quite possibly the stupidest thing he has ever said to a girl. 

Aelita, to her credit, took it well. Sure, she couldn’t stop her cheeks from burning or her fingers from fiddling with the bag handle, but she could look at him while he said something very kind to her that made her feel short of breath. All she managed to say was, “Thank you, Odd. That’s nice of you to offer.” 

After ten seconds of silence that stretched on forever, Odd started walking again and Aelita matched his stride. The rest of the trip back to the dorms was silent except for the almost imperceptible gasps from both of them when their hands brushed against each other. 

When they reached Aelita’s floor, she smiled up at him, half determined not to make this awkward. Before she could regret it, she gave Odd a quick, one-armed hug and said, “Thank you for my fairy house. Scone can visit anytime.” Then Odd watched her walk to her door, pull out her keys, and go inside. 

When he got to his room, he had the biggest grin on his face and Scone was placed on a high shelf where Kiwi couldn’t accidentally break him.

The next week, Odd gave Aelita a small candle to put inside her house and she lit it for weeks every night before going to bed. It made the room feel more like a home and watching the dim flicker of the light on her wall put her to sleep. 

When the candle ran out, Odd bought her candles in different scents - lavender, eucalyptus mint, vanilla and rose. Each time he brought her a new scent she practically glowed with excitement. Yumi was the only one in the group who noticed (besides Odd), but she kept her thoughts to herself. Aelita would figure out what that feeling meant soon enough. 


End file.
